Critical Thoughts on the Evangelical Embrace of Thomas Kinkade’s Art

A year and a half ago I wrote a post on Mockingbird about Thomas Kinkade, the prosperous “Painter of Light,” mostly responding to a then recent article highlighting his death due to a drug and alcohol overdose. I attempted to offer a thoughtful interpretation of Kinkade, his art, his unfortunate demise, and the Evangelical embrace of his work—how I see all of these things as interrelated. Some people disagreed, and others even regarded me as being arrogant about art and taste.

Admittedly, what I wrote was tongue-in-cheek at points. I’ve never respected Kinkade’s art, so I poked some fun at his expense, which in retrospect may have been insensitive, given the timing. The problem is that the post went quasi-viral, so many people I never expected ended up reading my analysis—namely, balking Kinkade fans. I later discovered that there is even an entire Reddit page devoted to skewering my post and me personally. My emotions about this are a mix of honor, humor, and horror. So I wrote a follow-up in which I tried to explain myself a little better, especially that what I’m mostly critical of is the Evangelical embrace not only of Kinkade but also sentimental/romantic art in general. Of course, hardly anyone read the follow-up, and I’m sure even fewer will read this lengthy—by internet standards—essay.

I only bring Kinkade up once again because my original post on him is living an active second life right now. For some reason a lot of people are reading it, and it is currently on the first page of Google search results for “Thomas Kinkade” (try it, or see Figure 1).

In December when many people were searching for Kinkade Christmas knick-knacks, those who came across my post added their comments, often filled with ad hominem vitriol aimed toward me personally. The sentiment in each comment is pretty much the same. I get to weigh in on whether or not to approve or reject each one before they appear in the comment thread, and I usually err on the side of rejecting the ones containing hateful language.

Figure 1. At the time of writing this essay, my original blog post, “The Drunken Downfall (and Death) of Thomas Kinkade,” is on page one of the Google search for “Thomas Kinkade” immediately after his company’s links and the Wikipedia entry on him.

Here is just one note as an example–because if you read one, you’ve basically read them all:

Matt, you’re an idiot. How can you possibly know what the world wants in terms of art? Kincaid’s (sic) immense popularity is proof that you don’t know. His art was ridiculed by people like you who insist that ‘real art’ must contain sadness and horror; that’s ridiculous.

Every artist wants to be appreciated for their contribution to the world and it was know-it-all pseudo critics like you that made Kincaid so despondent. There is absolutely no good reason to pan his work other than downright meanness. I guess that’s your contribution to the world?

After hearing several such complaints, I figured it was a good time to offer up further thoughts on Kinkade as clearly as possible with some challenging positions about his art and those who defend it.

(1) From a theologically orthodox Christian point-of-view, Kinkade’s comprehensive body of work is despairing because of its sentimentality. Consider the following theoretical framework from Jerram Barrs, a professor at Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis. Barrs describes good (or great) art this way in his book Echoes of Eden: Reflections on Christianity, Literature, and the Arts (2013):

All great art will echo … three elements of Eden: (1) Eden in its original glory, (2) Eden that is lost to us, and (3) the promise that Eden will be restored. (p. 26) …

All art that is worthy of the name is bound by the glory of the reality God has made and the shame of the human world as we have corrupted ourselves and fallen from that original glory.

All genuinely great art will appeal universally because of this element of truthfulness to the world as God made it and to the world of our human existence. Think of the worldwide appreciation of Shakespeare’s tragedies Hamlet and Macbeth. (p. 58)

Kinkade set out in his collective body of artwork as we know it (unless there is a hidden cache of surprises in an attic somewhere) to do exactly the opposite of what Barrs describes above. In fact, Kinkade is on record as having said:

I love to create beautiful worlds where light dances and peace reigns. I like to portray a world without the Fall.

—Thomas Kinkade

This makes his work romantic, sentimental, and escapist—kitsch, in other words. Kinkade paintings might make for colorful decorations, but they’re not profound as far as art goes. Kinkade is not alone though. He’s up there with the likes of the Celine Dions, Hallmark Cards, Joel Osteens, Oprah Winfreys, and soap operas of the world, all of whom are massively popular and big-time money makers. Notoriety does not mean their work is therefore good—it is a logical fallacy to appeal to popularity (like the note I received above insists), arguing something is good simply because a lot of people buy it. Pornography sells well too, but that doesn’t make it good or even art. Osteen, Oprah, and soap operas have mass appeal because they don’t challenge us; they show us what we want to see—like Kinkade’s entire body of work.

I’ll grant that one single Kinkade-esque painting isn’t a problem on its own. What’s problematic is when an artist devotes his entire career to willfully ignoring the present marring of this deeply fallen world. Such a collection offers no hope of future restoration because it escapes to the good ol’ days of a world with no Fall. But I don’t live in or know that world where peace reigns, and neither do you. Art such as Kinkade’s is as escapist as a drug that feels good and helps us ignore the pain for a fleeting moment. It neither resonates with our suffering nor does it offer up hope for a remedy. Kinkade is stuck on Eden in its short-lived golden age, but all of us live east of Eden where chaos reigns and darkness dances between the first and second Advents.

Many Christians promote such sentimentalism because it appears safe, but as musician Michael Gungor explains, Christianity has never been a safe religion. It’s unfortunate then that Evangelicalism often retreats to superficially inoffensive art. Gungor, who was raised in a fundamentalist Christian culture reflects on his upbringing in his book The Crowd, the Critic, and the Muse: A Book for Creators (2012), saying:

In the conservative environment in which I was raised, the lines for acceptable art had been clearly laid out. I was led to believe that if I wanted my art to be pleasing to God, it needed to fit into a set of narrow and utilitarian boxes. Good art was that which preached a perceived Christian message or had a practical use in a worship service. Art had no value in itself. There was no room in my belief system for experimenting or pushing creative boundaries. As a result, my art stayed safe, stale, and boring (by my current standards anyway). (p. 111)

Such utilitarian and stale art is reduced to a jingle or even propaganda. We should lament this position Evangelicalism often holds toward art, as evidenced in Kinkade’s popularity.

The good news of the Gospel, however, is not safe, stale, and boring. God can handle—and his people should be able to handle—artwork that reflects the truth about the ramifications of God’s broken creation yet holds out for its future restoration, refusing to escape to mere nostalgia about an idealized golden age humanity only knew briefly and destroyed long ago.

(3) I am compassionate about Kinkade’s addictions and his premature death, and I hope you are too: Kinkade was obviously a deeply afflicted soul. The sad thing about his life’s story is for a long time he was hiding behind a mask of a supposedly wholesome individual who painted pretty pictures, but his insides did not match his idyllic outsides. I imagine leading such a life must have been extremely exhausting, possibly contributing to his downward spiral.

I’m therefore curious: What if Kinkade had allowed himself (or were allowed by his fans) to explore his personal pain and the suffering of this world in at least some of his artwork? Could such creative and imaginative expressions have possibly brought about desperately needed healing, maybe even saved his life? We’ll never know, but I wonder with genuine grief for him and those like him.

Kinkade’s art remains highly problematic for his fellow sufferers who are still living with the pain of this world though. Their dereliction, depression, and sense of hopelessness go unacknowledged in the art of Kinkade and other artists like him. I say that not as someone who stands above this messed-up planet but as someone who has to deal with its realities all of the time, who contributes to them even. When I try to appreciate Kinkade’s art, it simply doesn’t connect with my human predicament. I need the hope of a remedy, but what I get instead is a distraction.

(4) Finally, if all you want are some pretty decorations, you can honestly do worse than Kinkade: I should clarify that I harp on Kinkade not because I have a particular distaste for him, but because he is so broadly famous both among Christians and non-Christians alike. As a matter of fact, there is much worse art out there sold in places like the gift aisle at LifeWay bookstores, on QVC, or at HomeGoods. But few of the artists with work sold in these places have household names like Kinkade’s. He’s admittedly low-hanging fruit, an easy target, but one I’m betting a lot of people will recognize for the sake of a larger point about sentimental art in general, especially romantic art promoted by Christians.

Far be it from me to suggest you should entirely avoid buying stuff like Kinkade’s and hanging it up on your walls. I admit to owning some decorative kitsch including an ironic Buddy Christ statuette on my office desk. But none of it is art in the deepest sense. Good art that has something of real significance to offer often doesn’t make the best decor. Yet good art is good and worthy of gallery walls because it uncovers seemingly hidden truths in the world, exposing reality and helping us (as Bob Dylan said) to crawl out from under the chaos of the world and fly above it—to see the world with honesty and clarity. Thankfully, though, no amount of bad art (or careless blogposts) can disqualify us from the love of God.

Bonus: If you still think Kinkade ought to have his place among the great artists of history after watching this video, I don’t know what to say—you and I are probably from two very different planets.

21 comments

Very insightful about Christianity, it is not safe. Many Christians and non- Christians like his work I think because it is a total denial of reality. I think if you look at TK work in terms of high romanticism and fantasy then that would bring a larger context to it. But I don’t know why people consider him a great artist. I like his Christmas cards but beyond that I’m not really sure why he is concidered one of the greates!

I think there are few out there who are willing to have emotional honesty both in work and life. To me the best theology and art is about the reality of the human condition and experience! The best art is acknowledging the truth of the human situation and bringing something honest, insightful and beautiful to it.

1. So much emphasis is placed on the aphorism “Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder.” Christians deal in objectivity all the time- we have received objective truths about God, we have objectively true laws that are simultaneously designed to inspire and humble a believer. Why do we have so much trouble with that objectivity being extended to beauty and art? Why does it fluster people to suggest that art must be rooted in truth to be beautiful? No Christian, past or present, who has seriously wrestled with issues of beauty and creation and God has ever endorsed the phrase “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

2. Irony – there’s some serious hostility in the Kinkade-verse, and it’s totally out of line with the images Kinkade painted.

3. Kudos Matt for saying this: TK was so talented, if he had allowed just a hint of reality to enter his paintings, we might have seen some seriously beautiful stuff. But as it stands now, I too relate more to Kinkade the addict than Kinkade the painter.

Thanks for keeping this convo going- I think it’s important. Sorry to hear you’ve become a bad guy on the internet.

2. Irony – there’s some serious hostility in the Kinkade-verse, and it’s totally out of line with the images Kinkade painted.

I counter with Dolores Umbridge. In my experience, the more “twee” the subject matter, the more suppressed rage that is seething below the surface. It is almost as though kittens and sunshine are deposited around the house as talismans against the reality being denied.

I love Kincaide Art, it is beautiful and it depicts life at certain points and times. We have all been swept away in awe of the beauty of God’s creations, mountains, oceans, lakes, beautiful summer days. I disagree, all art does not have to incorporate pain, some can just provide nourishment for our souls by reminding us of a moment in time when we felt truly happy and enveloped by God’s love!!

Not particularly a fan of Thomas Kincaide’s artwork, but – it is a tell of sorts to see what kind of pop culture gets taken to the rack on Mbird, given the amount of questionable “if you look hard enough, I swear you’ll find the Gospel” stuff written about other, more popular types of music, film, art.

Astute analysis of the flaws with Kinkade’s art, Matt. I would add that, in addition to the “theological” problems with his art (which are of a piece with the theological shallowness of popular conservative Evangelicalism–and I speak as a conservative Evangelical), Kinkade’s work is aesthetically shallow. It’s just bad art. Compared to someone like Renoir, who also painted “joyously”, Kinkade’s rendering, subject matter, color, etc. come across as hack, juvenile, and uninteresting.

I completely resonate with your theological perspective and thoughts on great art. I guess, the thing that has bothered me about your Kinkade posts is the potential unhelpfuness of the law that (in my words) “Kinkade’s art is not good art.”

Theologically speaking, I have issues with about 90% of the expressions of Christianity in America. It can be depressing and even infuriating to visit another church or land on a Christian radio station. I even raged my own twitter war against Joel Osteen’s account circa 2013.

Pastorally, however, I wouldn’t tell a Joel Osteen following Christian that, Osteen wasn’t preaching Christianity and that his palaver was just fatuous works-based therapeutic deism. Likewise, I wouldn’t tell my baptist friend that his emphasis on “making a decision for Christ” is an offense to God’s sovereignty.

As you and I both know, the law has a very clear and predictable response in the hearer. Beyond the surprise that your original post gained so much traction, I would guess that you aren’t surprise at the reactions of Kinkade fans.

Thomas Kinkade had a very real talent. A way of painting that captures light in a very poetic way. His work has a way of transporting people to a place in their memory and their mind that brings them peace. In his mind and that of his fans, they are getting a glimpse of the “world without the fall.” I can’t think of a more true and “authentic” yearning. To the broken and burdened viewer, his work may be a balm of reflected grace. That it doesn’t depict the brokenness of the world isn’t necessarily a fault. Is it really, as you say, “highly problematic”? Might it actually be a gift. after all, we done require that God’s grace come with a reminder of the fall. Our life is that reminder.

Like you, I think Kinkade’s work is saccharine and, frankly, cheeseball. But I think it is short-sighted and unhelpful to claim that it is a failure to be good art- in just the same way that my telling Joel Osteen’s twitter account handler that his posts were devoid of Jesus and the truth (they were) was short-sighted and unhelpful. Its a bit like the hand telling the foot it isn’t a part of the body, etc.

And finally, its worth noting that, regarding Kinkade himself, you mention that “for a long time he was hiding behind a mask of a supposedly wholesome individual who painted pretty pictures, but his insides did not match his idyllic outsides.” Does this not characterize all of us? I mean, Mockingbird (dare I say the Church) is basically in existence because of the ubiquity of this problem. Kinkade had a canvas. I have Facebook.

Kinkade was a broken child of God, whose desire to “paint the world without the Fall” likely arose from his deep acquaintance with it. And while I agree with you that his work isn’t a compelling narrative on its own, I hope we might allow the possibility that it was his expression of God’s grace in his life- without judgement.

My view of Kinkade’s work shifted some upon hearing a comment (I think it may have been the recording of the kitsch vs art talk at the Clean Slate conference) that the light emanating from all those quaint buildings looks very much like they are on fire. Like we sinners who struggle to keep up the appearance that we are following all the little-l-laws; they may look perfect on the surface, but there’s a disaster just inside the door.

I don’t know of this has been mentioned before, but in an episode of Bojack Horseman his talent agent gets swept up in a Thomas Kinkade painting, entitled “Glowing Fuzzy Nonsense”, while a police shootout happens ten feet behind her. She is imagining a world where she lives peacefully in a tudor in the painting. That world is ruined by a rival agent that appears in her daydream and then becomes the biggest agent in the Idyllic New England village, forcing Bojack’s agent to leave so that she can tear down the tudor a put up condos.

Even a cartoon character has difficulty accepting the what Kinkade is selling because it’s a world that we can’t relate to.

I used to wonder if all the happy houses and windmills are covering up graphic depictions of violence that Kinkade painted first. I’m curious if under the houses, there are pictures of adultery and murder that are painted over or maybe it’s implied that the houses have very bored and existentially threatening residents.

I was playing in a band at a church coffeehouse as a teenager when the band playing before us announced that their next song was a blues song. They proceeded to play a very non-bluesy song which had us all scratching our heads. This is a blues song I asked? Someone answered it’s “Christian Blues” and we all laughed. Detaching the profundity of someone’s personal faith from whether or not their work is profound is a tough pill to swallow sometimes. When the two are too closely linked it Muddies the Waters 🙂

I’m just sad to see all this over something that is personal preference. No two people will ever agree on art, fashion, car choice, house style, paint colors,etc. how has this become such a focal point. There are other things in life far more significant to talk about. It smells of legalism and an overage of attention on something mainly trivial.
Jesus made us all different. It shows in everyday life. That is one of the beauties of living. The Gispel and Grace are our constants. What flavor milkshake is not! Have a great day! Enjoy your uniqueness and let yourself off the hook of you like Kincade artwork. ?

The problem is bad art–maudlin, shallow, or sentimental–offered as visual examples of the “gospel” make the gospel come across as maudlin, shallow, and sentimental. We should also not fall prey to the Romanticist notion that beauty “is in the eye of the beholder”. Beauty is not mere “prettiness” or taste preference; it is as real, objective, and transcendent as truth and goodness. : )

Yes there are quite a few things wrong here. One is financially capitalizing, as the Kinkade Machine does, on the human need for solace, albeit that need sometimes manifests in one’s adoring the “bubblegum” art. Another is savaging Kinkade, who was a pitiable human being. No, his work will never rise to the ranks of that by Renoir, who was truly a painter of light. But it’s wrong to be arrogantly judgmental of Kinkade’s work and Kinkade the man. Rather we should remember the Bard’s words, “The quality of mercy is not strain’d: it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. It is twice blest: it blesseth him that gives and him that takes.” The Merchant of Venice, Act 4, Scene 1.

I’ve really enjoyed this series of posts. It’s very interesting for me to see Kinkade’s work critiqued from a theological perspective; as an atheist it’s a viewpoint from which i can’t myself view the pieces.

I’ve read all three of your posts now, for no other reason than the forst one is still on googles first search page. And i had forgotten Mr. Kincaid was dead, and I’m not sure I’d ever known the cause. (The reason for the google search)

While I can appreciate your opintion, which I do think comes off pretty harshly in your first post, I feel like you are assuming that anyone who enjoys Mr. Kincaid’s art is fooling themselves. Consider that I know that life inside my house is not perfect, or idyllic, but that does not change the fact that when I top the hill on the road home and see my home, lights on, waiting for me that I’m filled with a peace that I only find when I’m at home. It’s a crazy mess around here more often than not, but it’s home. When I look at Mr. Kincaid’s art, that’s what I imagine, that feeling of peace one gets upon arriving home, or grandma’s house, or whatever is that place for someone.

There have been plenty of artists who dont paint the ugly truth behind the art, I’m wondering if that always bothers you, or if it just bothers you because Mr. Kincaid was a Christian and his prints and products are sold in christian book stores and emblazened with bible quotes. Does it bother you as much to see Monet or Van Gogh’s works used on products marketed to Christians? Or is that people call his art Christian art?

Maybe a real analysis of Kincaid’s art as Christian art can only be whole if you take into account his life and his struggles.

For the record, I doubt his art will be featured in art history books, ever; I dont think of him as a great artist, but I do enjoy his work.

Matt, as a Christian, I have a view on this. Life is full of ups and downs. I think one has to look at Thomas Kinkade’s work objectively. He painted idyllic scenes because maybe they made him happy. Looking at his work, reminds me of extremely good times in my life. Peaceful times. That does not mean that I do not acknowledge the challenging times. That is what life is to me. Wonderful times, and sometimes challenging times. It really all depends on the person’s life Matt. You do not know that if he decided to paint dark pictures all of the sudden, then it would have helped him. It is something deeper then we all understand. When I look at Frida Kahlo’s work, I can see that she was extremely talented and put her heart and soul into her painting. But come on. Some of her work was downright depressing! That does not make me feel good, It might make you feel good to look at dark work, but that doesn’t apply to everybody. I love Thomas Kinkade’s pictures. Let people get joy from where ever they may find it! You have your opinion, and I have mine. Everybody is different. Everybody’s day to day life is different. His paintings may be a reality for some people! Not every day! But SOME days. Key word here is some days. Some days are beautiful. 🙂

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WHAT: Mockingbird seeks to connect the Christian faith with the realities of everyday life in fresh and down-to-earth ways.

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